Google's Airdrop-like Nearby Sharing feature was teased for months before finally landing earlier this year, letting you wirelessly and locally share content like photos and videos, but also links and app intents. Now Google has announced a new feature for Nearby Sharing that will let you share entire apps, built into the Play Store.
Of course, you could already do something like this in a few different ways. Google's Files Go lets you share apps, and there's always the more complicated workaround of sharing APKs and sideloading them, but this system promises to be more direct and simpler, built right into the Play Store. Google claims a new Share Apps menu will live in a Manage Apps & Games section (which doesn't exist anywhere we can find right now — maybe they mean "My apps & games" or "Manage your apps"?), and you'll be able to send apps by simply selecting them and firing them off.
The full workflow hasn't been detailed, and we don't know if there are any extra requirements for this feature on top of the existing Nearby Sharing requirements (Android 6.0+), but it sounds simple enough.
By virtue of being built into the Play Store, users won't have to handle differences in architecture with things like App Bundles that they might have to deal with sharing apps via some other methods, and they don't have to deal with the process of sideloading.
The new feature will be rolling out as an update "in the coming weeks," so you can probably expect to start sharing apps before Christmas.
